an opinionated sports blog

August 26, 2008

Well, the Giants are in some trouble now. Since winning the Super Bowl early this year, the Giants are now down two of the main reasons it was able to upset the Patriots — Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora. Sure, Strahan says he would come back from retirement (pulling a Favre) if the Giants offered up around $8 million, but the real big loss is Osi. All it took was one wrong step and down went the key to defending champs pass rush was lost for the entire season with ligament damage to his knee.

Umenyiora’s injury is one of the main reasons why NFL teams should not be playing their key guys for extended periods of time in the preseason and the league should be paying attention to this.

Every year some big name player is injured and a story similar to this will be run. But, by the end of the season, everyone has forgotten about these circumstances (in part because of our love of NFL football) and may even get into the idea of extending the season or forcing teams to play their stars in the preseason to generate fan interest. It’s the way it works now. Anyway that the league can make some extra money (even though its vaults are overflowing) it will take it.

For the players’ sake, hopefully some smart folks (obviously not commissioner Goodell) will always torpedo the extended season debate. The league thinks that the NFL is just like how it is in Madden, turn off injuries and there’s no worry about your players health; they couldn’t be more wrong and now the Giants are screwed.